Previously on Lemmy:
Past Discussions:
As promised, we are talking repairability this week. I thought it’s not really possible to talk repairability without talking about it in relations to build quality.
It seems to me that over the years, the general trend is that phones have become more and more difficult to repair in general. To me, I don’t believe that this is some kind of nefarious plot designed to make people buy new phones every two years, here are some of the reasons why I think it is:
The first is the perceived build quality. It used to be that plastic is the most common type of material for the back of phones, and I would say plastic is the ideal default material for the back of phones: cheap, and versatile in hardness, color, and texture. However, the use of plastic in cheaper phones has resulted in a negative perception. Metal backs are durable but doesn’t allow for NFC signals through, and I can’t believe they settled on glass as the ideal material for the back instead, since it is actually extremely impractical to use.
The second is waterproofing. Waterproofing requirement means that glue is mandatory even with the presence of a gasket, which naturally discourages the
The third would the improvement in actual build quality. Modularity is very much still a trade-off, as if we can assume the phone cannot be easily opened, then more fragile components can be used in the phone that doesn’t have the requirement to be able to be repeatedly plugged and unplugged. One of the most important changes is the change from Micro-USB to USB-C, as the increased durability means that people won’t consider it to be a part that requires replacement as much.
I just think that what’s broken can eventually be fixed, but it’ll never feel the same afterwards.
Sorry if this is a bit messier and late this week, very interested in everybody’s thoughts on this topic. The Fairphones look interesting, but it’s not easy to get in the States.
I don’t know about other repairable phones, but what I like about the Fairphone and why I’d most likely get one in the future is that it’s easy to open up, nothing is glued, you can replace even the camera and official parts are available on their store.
What I really dislike though is the pricing, it feels expensive for what it offers; the Snapdragon 750G of the Fairphone 4 is almost 3 years old, it still ships with Android 12 and the version 13 update will only come out by this year-end.
I mean okay, one could still install LineageOS on it and get the latest Android experience, but I just feel that like with everything else we’re always expecting the consumer to pay extra for more sustainability.
What I don’t like about tge Fairphone is the size. Coming from a Sony XZ1 Compact, it’s just gigantic.
Unfortunately Fairphone just doesn’t have the economies of scale to be able to release 2 phones of different sizes.